We argue a source of time-varying premium (TVTP) in Japanese government bond market, and show that it is interest rate smoothing that causes empirical failures of expectation theory of term structure of interest rates. We estimate a regime switching ARCH model where an interest rate smoothing...

The consequences of liberalization on structural changes are examined using data from manufacturing industry in Nepal which is classified as a least developed country. This is important because doubts that liberalization may not solve the problems of low-income developing countries remain strong...

Consumption and income have both grown rapidly in Taiwan over the past forty years, with younger birth cohorts experiencing faster growth. The long upward trend in consumption presents a strong challenge to the consumption smoothing predictions of the Permanent Income Hypothesis. We investigate...

The credible identification of endogenous peer group effects -- i.e. social multiplier or feedback effects -- has long eluded social scientists. We argue that such effects are most credibly identified by a randomly assigned social program which operates at differing intensities within and...

We explore the extent to which the huge race gap in wealth can be explained with properly constructed income and demographic variables. In some instances we explain the entire wealth gap with income and demographics provided that we estimate the wealth model on a sample of whites. However, we...

In Côte d'Ivoire, as in much of Africa, husbands and wives farm different crops on separate plots. These different crops are differentially sensitive to particular kinds of rainfall shocks. We find that conditional on overall household expenditure, the composition of expenditure is sensitive to...

This paper investigates the impacts of cotton marketing reforms on farm productivity, a key element for poverty alleviation, in rural Zambia. The reforms comprised the elimination of the Zambian cotton marketing board that was in place since 1977. Following liberalization, the sector adopted an...

Information asymmetries are important in theory but difficult to identify in practice. We estimate the empirical importance of adverse selection and moral hazard in a consumer credit market using a new field experiment methodology. We randomized 58,000 direct mail offers issued by a major South...

A bidding rotating savings and credit association (Rosca) is modeled as a sequence of symmetricindependent-private-value auctions with price-proportional benefits to bidders. We estimate a structural econometric model which, by introducing an altruistic component into each bidder's utility...